Completed costume - steampunk Storm

For Anime North 2011, I wore my steampunk Storm costume, which I originally made for Fan Expo 2009. A few friends and I did a group cosplay of the X-Men with a steampunk twist.

X-Men + steampunk = X-Gentlemen

From top left: Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Shadowcat, Beast, Rogue, Jean Gray

Me as Storm

Although the costume had ended up a bit more rushed than I hoped (a story for another post!), overall I was pretty happy with it. Unfortunately, the zipper pull on the corset I wore with it broke. On the upside, I had been wanting to draft a corset with better shaping, so this, coupled with the fact that I wanted to re-wear the costume for Halloween 2010, ended up being the perfect excuse to make one.

I used katafalk's wonderful tutorial to draft the corset and Volute Lady's method detailed in this post at the corsetmakers LJ community to assemble it. It was made from dark blue denim I found on sale, blue polyester lining and, for the boning, heavy-duty cable ties (I put two in each channel for extra support).

It went together pretty quickly and looked nice when I tried it on, and overall I was pretty satisfied with how it turned out. With that done, I tried on the bodice over the corset...

Different corset, different fit (sorry about the dirty mirror!)

 

...only to find that the bodice was now looser around the waist. MUCH looser. Thankfully this was pretty easy to fix – it was just a matter of removing the lining, taking in the side front seams about 1”, tapering to nothing just below the underbust on both fashion fabric and lining, and putting it back together again. Fortunately, that was all I needed to complete my costume. That Halloween I also decided to tackle my friend's costume, which would prove to be a MUCH bigger job....